This invention relates to a musical instrument and, more particularly, to a musical instrument and a support equipment for the musical instrument.
Various support systems have been proposed for music players. A support equipment is associated with a keyboard musical instrument, and previously notifies the black/white keys to be depressed to the player. Another support equipment is used for an ensemble. While a trainee is playing a melody, the support equipment generates tones for the accompaniment.
Yet another support equipment also generates the tones for the accompaniment, and synchronizes the accompaniment with the melody. Even if a trainee is out of the tempo in a certain passage, the support equipment produces the tones at irregular intervals, and makes the accompaniment synchronous with the melody. The support equipment is hereinbelow referred to as xe2x80x9celectronic synchronizerxe2x80x9d.
The prior art electronic synchronizer controls the tone generation as follows. The prior art electronic synchronizer has a controller, a data storage and an array of sensors. A set of music data codes representative of the melody and the accompaniment is stored in the data storage, and the sensors monitor the motion of the black/white keys. The set of music data codes is divided into data groups assigned to note groups of a tune. The melodic subject or the chord is changed at the boundary between the note groups. While a trainee is playing the melody, the sensors notifies the depressed keys to the controller, and the controller checks the present data group to see whether the trainee depresses a black/white key assigned the note identical with the last note of the associated note group. If the trainee has not depressed the black/white key, the controller retards the progression of the accompaniment. Thus, the prior art electronic synchronizer makes the accompaniment synchronous with the melody only at the boundaries between the adjacent note groups.
A problem is encountered in the prior art electronic synchronizer in that the accompaniment does not follow time lag or temporal advance intentionally introduced into the performance. Some players want to individualize their performance. Such an individualistic player intentionally retards or advances the generation of certain tones in the passage. If the time lag is introduced at the boundary between the note groups, the prior art electronic synchronizer is responsive to the individualistic player, and makes the accompaniment synchronous with the melody. However, when the individualistic player introduce the time lag at the boundary between two tones in a certain note group, the prior art electronic synchronizer can not respond to the individualistic player.
It is therefore an important object of the present invention to provide a support system, which makes a part of music synchronous with another part performed by a player at any point in the music.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a synchronizer for synchronizing a first musical instrument with a second musical instrument comprising a first data source storing a first piece of sequence data including a first series of pieces of music data used for producing first tones for a part of a score and pieces of synchronous data selectively associated with the pieces of music data of the first series and a second piece of sequence data including a second series of pieces of music data used for producing tones for another part of the score and synchronously outputting the first piece of sequence data and the second piece of sequence data, a second data source successively outputting pieces of reference data representative of an actual performance on the second musical instrument for producing the first tones, and a controller connected to the first data source, the second data source and the first musical instrument, comparing the pieces of synchronous data with certain pieces of reference data corresponding to the pieces of music data associated with the pieces of synchronous data to see whether or not the second data source timely outputs the certain pieces of reference data and controlling a data transfer of the second series of pieces of music data to the first musical instrument so as to make the another part synchronous with the actual performance.